I’d say that Harvard is Harvard no more. Think about it, Harvard is Harvard because of the students they pick. Holistic applies to the student body not individual students.
That statement ignores the fact Harvard didn’t always practice holistic admissions. In fact, they used admissions exams up until the early 20th century as shown from the following NYT link:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/31/remembering-when-college-was-a-buyers-bazaar/?_r=0
Incidentally, holistic admissions started in the early 20th century by Ivy and many peer colleges as an effort to screen out “undesirable” children of non-WASP immigrants*. Especially those from lower-income backgrounds because so many were passing those entrance exams that the admins were concerned about losing their traditional core constituency…scions of wealthy WASP families.
- This was also the origin of the modern college application and some aspects which are now optional such as the option for the applicant to include his/her own photo in Columbia's application were once mandatory.
Why mandatory? Because Columbia fell into a once popular late 19th/early 20th century pseudo-scientific fad called physiognomy where the feeling was one could judge one’s character traits by examining someone’s facial features. It was a fad especially popularized by prominent people…including some academics/admins who wanted to justify racist/religious prejudices thorough “scientific means” during this period and academics/high admins of Ivies and other peer private colleges were a part of that.
It was really only after the horrific implications of this fad became apparent with Nazi policies(also prominent supporters/promoters of this fad) at the end of WWII was this “scientific” fad completely discredited and deservedly consigned to the trashbin of history.
@eiholi when, in your view, was Harvard ever Harvard? When it was training ministers in the 17th century, or when it was just becoming a research university in the 18th-19th centuries, or when it was educating an all-male predominantly WASP student body in the first half of the 20th century, or when it merged with Radcliffe and began formally admitting women (but still relatively few minorities of any kind) in the mid-20th century, or in the late 20th century to the present day, when it became much more open to the best and brightest from anywhere than at any time in its history?
In all of those periods (but nowadays much less than was historically the case), Harvard College had plenty of students who were socially prominent/wealthy and whose ancestors had graduated from there. There was never a “golden age” when all the applicants were racked and stacked and only those with the highest academic standing were admitted, notwithstanding entrance exams being used to a greater or lesser extent. Arguably, the closest Harvard has ever been to a pure meritocracy is right now.
^ I said “if you dial back the dev and legacy spots, Harvard is Harvard no more.” Obviously Harvard has been doing whatever it can to maintain its leading position.
@northwesty not sure I buy the idea that less legacy at Harvard = less money for fin aid. Much of Harvard’s money is already there. Much of the big money comes from the Kushner’s of the world, who are not Harvard legacy but are buying their way in. While it might have some effect, I doubt it is great at Harvard. The Penns and Cornells of the league might find it hits a bit harder.
This is almost completely wrong, at least when in comes to the elite schools.
It seems that many people have a big misconception about this whole topic. At the elite schools, almost nothing comes from non-legacies who have kids at the school. Less than 5% of their total fundraising. These schools are not just engaging in naked quid-pro-quos of donations for spots in their class.
The traditional big donor (individual, not institution) is an alumnus of the school who’s been giving money steadily. The majority of the big gifts actually comes from people in their 60’s and 70’s who have been donating their whole lives and finally decide to make a huge gift. By the time someone has amassed a fortune and is thinking of giving it away, they are usually past the age when they have college age kids (This was overwhelmingly true 25+ years ago, though things have changed a bit over the last 25 years as people in their 30’s and 40’s have quickly made fortunes in technology and on Wall Street)
Most of these people give money because it’s their alma mater. I am sure by the time their kids are in high school they are also hoping it will help with admissions, but these people are pretty savvy and know that their kid needs to be qualified. They also know that Harvard can be a horrible experience if their kid isn’t a good fit there, and they’re rich enough that they aren’t worried about their children’s future even if they don’t go to Harvard.
Of course, being a legacy and having parents who have been donating their whole lives and look like they have the potential to give a really big gift down the road is going to help with admissions a lot. Suppose you’re a kid with 2200+ SATs, top 1 or 2% of your class, captain of your team, strong EC’s, etc. You’re probably not getting into Harvard on that alone … you need a special “plus” too. But if you’re a legacy with parents who’ve been very involved supporters of the school, your odds are very good even without a “plus” (though there are still no guarantees). I write “very involved supporters” and not “development level donors” for a reason. Believe it or not, even among Harvard alumni there just aren’t that many people each year who can write a $5 million dollar check or more. So all those people who think that lots of spots are being taken by development admits can calm down. If they were, then Harvard’s endowment would be $70 Billion and not $35 Billion.
I don’t know how things work at non elite schools. But honestly, if you’re a 2200+ SAT kid with a great resume, then once you’re out of the top 40-ish most selective schools things are pretty close to open admission anyway.
This is an old article, but pretty much lines up with what I’ve experienced. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1993/6/8/reunion-gifts-drive-week-of-partying/?page=single I usually get called by current students for donations, but for the last reunion I got a call from someone I went to high school with.
There is always a big contests between the 25th reunion and the 50th reunion and they announce how much money they have raised. The 50th reunion nearly always wins because they aren’t saving for retirement or paying for college tuitions any more. There is usually someone with deep pockets who will give what ever it takes to top the 25th’s maximum.
The biggest donors didn’t always go to Harvard for undergrad. Neither John Paulson nor Gerald Chan went to Harvard for undergrad.
@roethlisburger I think Harvard and Stanford, because of their brand names and stronger business schools (and, in Stanford’s case, its proximity to and relationships with Silicon Valley) tend to attract relatively larger amounts of marquee gifts from people who didn’t go to college there than their peers.
At Yale, in contrast, most of the largest gifts - Charles Johnson’s $250m to build the new colleges, Stephen Schwarzman’s $150m to redo Commons, Stephen Adams’ $100m to the School of Music, Peter Baldwin/Lisbet Rausing’s $50m to the humanities, the >$100m from the “Extraordinary Class of '54”, etc. - have tended to come from graduates of Yale College, generally with children beyond college age, as was posited upthread. Similarly, Princeton’s biggest donors (e.g., William Scheide, Peter Lewis, Meg Whitman, Gordon Wu) generally were undergraduates there.
I’ve got no interest in parsing all these names, but why is the NFL Players Association giving Harvard $100 million? http://www.milliondollarlist.org/recipients/harvard-university
That’s true, but they’re still alumni of Harvard University.
If you want to get technical about it, Chan’s gift went to the School of Public Health, which is where his degree is from. Paulson’s gift was mostly given to the College’s school of engineering and applied science rather than the business school (from which he has his MBA) in large part because Harvard’s administration convinced him that engineering was one of their highest needs for a donation of that size and a great investment for his money, so he should direct his donation there.
The point is that they weren’t strangers who called Harvard up and made a donation. Certainly Chan was quite engaged with the School of Public Health before making his naming gift and had been a supporter for years.
My guess would be concussion studies.ETA: Yeah, it’s for that plus other player safety issues.
My guess is because they have concussions.
“This is almost completely wrong, at least when in comes to the elite schools.”
While me claiming that it is “mostly” Kushner’s of the world “buying their way in” was a bit glib, the reality is the big endowment money tends to come from 1 time donors, often with little concern about their kids getting in to their legacy. I’m pretty sure the Chan kids all went to USC (at least Ronnies, don’t know about Gerald’s.) Paulson’s kids are still young enough, I guess, but really those kind of 300-400 million donors are more about their name-on-a-building/school legacy, and I doubt much of their thinking is influenced by whether their kid gets a leg up (you could get a couple of Paulson kids in Harvard for way less than 400 mill.) The Johnsons don’t have Harvard-aged kids either, far as I know. (Of course they aren’t “strangers” but the legacy admit policy is not what drives them.)
Lots of alumni (and others) donate to Ivies for other reasons than just hoping their kids go there. But that also doesn’t change the central idea, which is admitting less legacies would not, necessarily, cut back on financial aid. You could actually admit less legacies, and just make sure all 13% were full-pay (some legacies probably aren’t 100% full pay, Harvard is pretty generous and even Harvard grads do low paying things like… uh… become professors of humanities like my Harvard grad dad!)
According to Harvard ~ 10% of its budget was from “current use gifts” which is generally alumni donating in annual campaigns. It was around 500 million recently, which is not small change, but tuition brings in twice that - and that amount could be easily increased at the top margin without affecting SES. Given that Harvard give some fin aid even to families who make as much as between 180 - 200k (and even a few above) - families who, if they didn’t get in to Harvard, would have found ways to finance equally if not more expensive schools - So to make up for less “current use” donations you might have admit a few more 250k a year families and a few less 180-200 but it’s not really going to change Harvard’s demographics much. But this is all just playing with numbers. Schools like Harvard like the “narrative” of strong legacy connections. Plenty of other schools like MIT, CIT, Oxford and Cambridge are able to do ok without it.
But however you feel about it, it is pretty clear legacy admissions go a long way to offset the “hook” of URMs in the SES and racial/ethnic make-up of a class.
One thing you’re ignoring was the blatant discrimination against URMs* and other “undesirable groups” prevalent from the origins of most** of those elite colleges along with the fact that educational access sufficient for admission to any college…or even high schools was so limited before the early 20th century that Ivies and peer elite colleges could use academic admissions exams with the understanding that the only groups likely to have such educational access in safely large enough numbers were the desirable scions of wealthy WASP families. And even then, they had some issues judging by that NYT link which stated elite college admissions in the mid-late 19th century was a “student’s market”. True…for their ideal “desirable student”.
- Most URMs and Women were practically barred or severely restricted in their higher ed options even assuming they managed to gain sufficient educational access to pass those admission exams up until the early 20th century and later when they switched over to the "holistic application process.
This was one reason why some private colleges like Oberlin and a handful of others were considered historically noteworthy in the early 19th century for allowing Black and female students to study as students on practically the same basis as their White male counterparts. That was considered extremely radical and quite controversial for many in the early-mid 19th century, especially in the antebellum south.
The Ivies/peer elites and many other colleges were johnny come latelys…sometimes extremely so regarding this…a basis for AA admission programs instituted in the last 4+ decades as it was partially implemented to make up for the cumulative effects of such discrimination.
** Dartmouth was briefly an exception early in its history by admitting Native-Americans in the beginning…but that policy didn’t last beyond the first few decades of its existence.
@cobrat that’s exactly my point. As I said, “arguably, the closest Harvard has ever been to a pure meritocracy is right now”, because the kinds of discrimination you’re referring to are less acceptable than they’ve ever been.
While I agree with that, I am of the view that it would be best if developmental/legacy admissions boosts are eliminated…especially considering 1. Those who are most likely to get the boost are already heavily advantaged in many ways for multiple generations and 2. They’re really not necessary for most garden-variety legacies(The ones with the high stats mostly in middle-top of non-hooked group who end up getting admitted) which are often conflated with the ones which folks like yours truly have an issue with…the legacies with weaker stats* with alum parents who have the financial wherewithal to make sustained contributions of several hundred thousand/year for many years prior or a multi-million dollar donation at the drop of the hat.
- Specifically, I'm thinking of folks not only like the suspected individual in OP, but also my older college classmate who was admitted as a legacy to one Ivy despite having really low SATs, a boarding school curriculum which included no lab sciences(2 years of rocks for jocks type science courses), and academically struggled at our LAC to the point he crashed and burned to the point of being placed on a 1 year academic suspension and struggled through the same intermediate/advanced courses he was repeating the second time while I and most other classmates had no issues while taking those same courses for the first and only time.
Am also thinking to a lesser extent of a slightly older HS classmate who was admitted to Princeton with an 88 average with a specific notation on the GC provided admission stats for his graduating class that his admission was due to legacy/developmental considerations*. Unlike my older college classmate, I have no doubt he had the academic goods to finish in good/great academic standing in 4 years.
Then again, no one from my HS or the in-law in my family who overlapped with Ted Cruz as a STEM major regarded Princeton as being so academically demanding that a legacy/developmental admit with slightly below-par stats would struggle to graduate with anything lower than a 3.0 or greater.
- The GC made such specific notations to warn the rest of us that it was a legacy/developmental admission case and thus, his being admitted with such low for HYPSMCC stats wasn't applicable to the vast majority of students without such a substantial hook.
Hmmm, did Oberlin have low admission standards at the time? Also, why did he attend Oberlin instead of the Ivy?
“@northwesty not sure I buy the idea that less legacy at Harvard = less money for fin aid. Much of Harvard’s money is already there. Much of the big money comes from the Kushner’s of the world, who are not Harvard legacy but are buying their way in.”
Harvard is about 30% full payors. Admitting legacies is one of many ways that Harvard is able to hit its budget for full payors. 2000 full payors a year at $65k a year brings in $130 million annually. That’s big money and essential to Harvard’s budget.
To replace that full payor revenue, Harvard would need to bring in an additional $3-4 Billion of endowment.
If Harvard were to eliminate legacy admissions, they would instead need to find a way to replace the full payor legacies with full payor non-legacies. They wouldn’t be able to replace all those full pay legacies with no pay scholarship students without having a big budget hit.
I personally can’t get too excited about legacy admissions. Since in many cases the legacy tip gives preference to one white suburban higher SES high stat legacy applicant over another white suburban higher SES high stat non-legacy applicant. Pretty much the definition of a first world problem.
@cobrat I thought about responding to this in one way, but concluded that everything I would have written I’ve already said elsewhere upthread (which I’ll assume you read and didn’t find convincing). So I’ll try a different tack: I’m curious about the Princeton student. What sort of student do you think Princeton should have admitted instead of him, and why?
He thought Oberlin would be much easier because its rigor/quantity standards of the academic workload was and is easier than being admitted to that Ivy or peer elite colleges.
As subsequent events proved, he was gravely mistaken about that assumption.
At the time of that graduating class and my graduating class were applying to colleges, one needed a HS GPA in the low-mid '90s to even be considered a viable contender as a non-hooked applicant. Someone with anything lower than a 92 cumulative GPA without a legacy/developmental hook would have been told to “forget about HYPMCC” or peer elites.
Someone without the legacy/developmental hook with an 88 would have been told to forget about the Ivies except Columbia SEAS(assuming one was lopsided in math as was the case with most HS classmates) or Cornell.